Trigger Phrase
by The Thirteenth Hero
Summary: Join Ila, a pink-haired border-line Sue, on her epic quest. She's the new student at the Skool. Thankfully, she's been given the benefit of the doubt by her classmates, but who knows how long that will last? After all, that weird Dib kid seems to think she's evil, Zim has a habit of saying things that trigger very odd memories, and...well, it can't get any worse, right?
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: May I present...something I wrote a long time ago and decided to clean up and release for feedback and fun. I swear, I'll update ****_The Perfect Student _****soon. When I get over the writer's block curse that someone seems to have laid upon that story... **

**At any rate. Allow me to apologize in advance, and beg reviews from you.**

The second that the bus doors opened, the scent of the city washed over me. A smell of diesel fumes, concrete, hot tar, and grease from the various fast-food restaurants. A smell of civilization.

It must have just finished raining here. I hopped off of the bus, glancing up at the gray sky as my sneakers hit the wet cement of the sidewalk. There were puddles everywhere, most of them filled with water that you wouldn't want to splash in, lest it get on your skin. Rain is supposed to be cleansing, but I doubted that anything could clean this city. The filth was too deeply ingrained in it.

The doors of the bus closed, and it drove off. For a moment, the ground beneath my feet thrummed with the force of its engine, then was still once more. Well, not really still, in a place filled with over a hundred thousand vehicles. But at least the vibrations were less noticeable.

Hitching the strap of my backpack a little higher on my shoulder, I started walking. The air was slightly cool on my bare arms, but not bad enough for me to dig out my jacket. I welcomed the slight chill after the stifling heat of the bus, which was pretty much all I'd known for the past few days. I had come to this place from pretty far away.

A few people gave me odd looks as I made my way to the suburbs, but a shabbily-dressed, pink-haired girl wasn't the strangest thing that they had seen all day, so their eyes didn't linger on me for long. I was glad of it; the last thing I needed was for some good samaritan to stop me and ask what I was doing and where my parents were. I could probably lie my way out if that happened, but still, it would slow me down.

It had taken months of spying and eavesdropping to gather the information that I needed to find this place. Months of standing on a table in the basement of an abandoned apartment building, holding my laptop over my head and searching for a good signal. Months of deciphering codes and guessing passwords. Months of fashioning crude listening devices from scavenged scrap metal and placing them at various key locations in my hometown.

But now I was here. And that was really all that mattered, right?

The buildings were thinning around me. I was glad of it; cities built with the new, futuristic designs (like this one) had a slightly claustrophobic feel to them. And the magenta-and-purple stone was a little weird. Seriously, who designed this place?

I checked my watch. 11:35. It was a Tuesday, which meant that school was in session. And according the maps that I'd printed off of the internet, the school was right...

Here. I stopped and frowned at the building that I saw in front of me. It looked kind of run-down, even by public educational standards. The fence around the playground had barbed wire on top of it, and I really hoped that the obvious spelling mistake in the sign was meant to be funny.

But I wasn't here for education. At least, not the kind that this place would offer.

Sighing, I walked down the sidewalk, up the steps, and into the building. It was even more derelict inside, with the half-mechanized look that most buildings in this area had. I had a bit of trouble finding the main office; the hallways were pretty confusing. I imagined that the kids who had gone here forever would know this place like the back of their hands, though.

The secretary looked up and smiled when I opened the door and walked in. The various motivational posters scattered over the walls drew attention away from the cracks and water stains, and I glanced uneasily at them as I made my way to the front desk. The sayings were normal, like what you'd find in any school (Reach for the Stars! You Can Do It! School Rocks!) but the icons were kind of weird. I mentally shivered and looked up at the secretary. She was tall normally, but her desk was also several feet off the floor.

"Can I help you?" the woman asked.

"I'm a new student," I said, trying to sound as confident as possible.

"New student?" she frowned, turning to the computer beside her. I nodded.

"Yes. Ila-"

"Oh, wait, here you are. Yes, you're scheduled to start today." She glanced at me, her interest fading slightly as she realized that I was just another member of the mob that went to this school. "You'll be in Miss Bitters' class. I'll give her a call and warn her."

Warn her? Interesting choice of words.

She gave me directions to the classroom, and I thanked her. My footsteps sounded unnaturally loud in the shadowy hallways, but I tried not to dwell on it. So far, everything had gone pretty smoothly. Every plan has a point where something goes horrifically wrong, but mine obviously hadn't reached that yet. I had nothing to worry about.

I found the room that the secretary had described and reached for the door handle. As soon as I opened it, every head in the classroom turned to me. A few stood out in particular: a withered, nasty-looking old woman in the front of the classroom who had to be a teacher, a kid with glasses whose raven hair formed a perfect right angle, and another boy, with weird clothing and...green skin?

My gaze lingered on this last one the longest as something in the back of my mind gave a little flutter kick of excitement. He narrowed his violet eyes. I had the distinct feeling that I was being threatened in a way that I couldn't understand.

I quickly looked away from him and walked up to the front of the room.

The teacher-presumably Miss Bitters-glared at me, then looked back out at the class.

"Children," she said in a creaky voice. "This is the newest addition to your ranks. Please try and act interested as she introduces herself."

Most of my new classmates looked incredibly bored, with the exception of the kid with glasses and the one with the green skin. The green one was looking at me like he wasn't quite sure what to think, and the other...well, he was staring me down with downright hostility. I glared back. What was wrong with him? I hadn't even said anything yet.

"I'm Ila," I announced. "I've never been in a school this big before, and I'm kinda hoping that you guys will help me out with finding my way around."

Miss Bitters snorted. "Don't count on it."

I glanced at her, then back at the class. "Um...there's not really anything else, other than that I like computers. Questions?"

The hand of the kid with glasses shot right up. I pointed to him.

"Uh, you aren't some sort of alien invader, are you?" he asked, fixing me with a penetrating stare. "Pardon my asking, but...we've had that problem before."

I gave him a weird look, and a purple-haired girl called out, "Don't pay any attention to him. He's crazy."

Her comment was met with murmured agreement from the others. The one in question turned around in his seat and exclaimed, not without a certain amount of indignation, "I'm not crazy! Remember Tak? And Zim?"

"Lies!" the green kid yelled, jumping up on his chair and stabbing a finger at the kid with the glasses. "The Dib-creature lies!"

I pointed to him. "What about this one?"

The purple-haired girl looked at him. He seemed to have calmed down; he was sitting again, although he was still glaring at the kid whose name seemed to be Dib.

"Yeah...we're still figuring him out. I'm Zita, by the way."

I nodded. "Nice to meet you."

"And I'm Dib," Dib spoke up suddenly. "The only one who actually knows what's going on!"

"Yeah...okay." I glanced back at Zita, who twirled her finger next to her head in the "crazy" gesture.

"Ila, you can sit there," Miss Bitters said, pointing to a spot near the middle of the room, away from Dib, Zita, and the green kid. A few desks in one row slid backwards, a hole appeared in the floor, and an empty one rose out of it. I raised an eyebrow. High-tech.

I headed over to the newly-surfaced desk, being sure to give Dib's a wide berth. I slung my bag over the back of the chair, sat down, and just like that, it was as if I had been part of the class forever. Miss Bitters resumed her lesson about squirrelly doom or something, and none of the other kids gave me a second glance.

Except for Dib, who was looking at me again. This time, it was like he was sizing me up, trying to determine what I was. Or what I could be. He seemed to be looking for something. Maybe just anything to suggest that I was not of this Earth. Or maybe...

He was looking for a potential ally?

I stuck my tongue out at him, and Dib promptly faced forward again.

The green kid looked over at me, his expression a mixture of suspicion, curiosity, and a certain amount of perplexity.

Him, I smiled at.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: The second chapter, in which Dib narrates for awhile and Ila begins the transition from almost-Sue to full-Sue.**

Dib watched the new girl out of the corner of his eye. She seemed normal enough, but appearances could be deceiving. He knew that first-hand.

Sure, on the outside she looked like an ordinary teenage girl. Jeans, sneakers, a tank top, and a backpack covered with faded patches and buttons. She was even fairly pretty, with long pink hair and narrow eyes—one was blue, and one was green, giving her a unique look. But Dib couldn't shake the weird vibe he was getting from her.

He stared at her hand. She was holding a pencil above a notebook that she had dug out of her backpack. She seemed ready to take notes, but her enthusiasm was fading fast. It looked like she had already figured out that Miss Bitters rarely said anything worth taking note of (of course, Dib had some of her stranger quotes in a folder at home, labeled "Miss Bitters—Ordinary Schoolteacher or Vampire-Demon?").

He counted her fingers. No, Ila had the right number for a human. Irkens only had two, plus an opposable thumb.

Of course, that didn't mean that she couldn't be some _other_ type of alien. Or maybe she wasn't an alien at all—maybe she was some other sort of paranormal entity. Like a ghost, or a vampire, or...

Dib shook his musings from his head and looked over at Zim, whose eyes were nearly closed with boredom. _Zim._ Four feet of pure alien evil, the Earth's worst nightmare, and Dib's arch-, mortal, bitter, and eternal enemy. The destruction and/or capture of whom was his only purpose in life.

He hated to admit it, but Zim was sort of Dib's early-warning system for anything out of the ordinary. The alien could usually pick up on stuff that humans couldn't; Dib didn't understand it yet, but he was thinking of calling it the "Zim-sense." He suspected that it had to do with the fact that the invader was naturally suspicious of anything on this planet.

_But Zim doesn't seem too concerned with Ila,_ Dib reflected as he turned his attention back to the new girl. The alien had been decidedly freaked out about Tak, but it appeared that the new girl was simply another "human worm-baby" to him. One of Zim's favorite expressions. Dib knew this because he had multiple files just for the interesting abuses of the English language that Zim used, and he—

"Dib!" Miss Bitters snapped, leaning down to growl at him. Unconsciously, Dib leaned back in his seat; even though his investigation of the teacher was supposed to be neutral, he was leaning towards the vampire-demon side. "Stop staring at Ila and pay attention!"

"Yes, ma'am," Dib muttered, ducking his head before he could see the laughter of the other kids. He heard it, though; they loved when he got in trouble.

Zim was laughing the loudest. When Dib glared at him, he grinned viciously. _Another defeat for the stinking inhabitants of Earth,_ he could almost hear him saying. It was stupid how seriously Zim took even the smallest of battles; how seriously he took the things that weren't even battles.

What was even more stupid was how seriously _Dib_ took them.

He looked away, feeling anger stirring within him. _I'll get you yet, alien scum..._

Now Ila was giving him a weird look. The kind of look that girls give the guys who are stalking them. Dib pointed to Zim, then made what he hoped was a that's-an-evil-alien-who's-trying-to-destroy-all-of-humanity gesture. It must not have come across like that, because the new girl raised one pink eyebrow in bewilderment and faced forward again.

Ila had lost even feigned interest in whatever Miss Bitters was saying (something about an organ transplant from a squirrel to a human going horribly wrong and creating Squirrelboy, the monster that terrorized the Midwest to this day), and had turned around to rummage in her bag. Dib was highly interested in the fact that she had taken it off; further proof that she wasn't Irken. He didn't really know what the deal was with Zim's backpack, but he never removed it. It seemed to be surgically grafted to his spine. Tak had worn one, too, and so had all of the other members of the Irken race that Dib had seen so far. Which wasn't exactly a large number to go off of, but still.

Ila glanced at him for an instant, then narrowed her eyes further and turned away. Dib ground his teeth in frustration. It seemed that Ila, like the rest of his classmates, was a lost cause. A total moron. An ignorant fool who couldn't see the truth even when it was sitting across the room from her...

Wait a minute. What had she just pulled out of her backpack? Was that...

Dib squinted. Yes, it was. _Popular UFO_. An alien conspiracy magazine that he subscribed to, and enjoyed on occasion. The articles usually seemed like they did their research.

But for Ila to have it was momentous. Earth-shattering. Now, it _could_ have meant that she was just a science-fiction nut. But a sci-fi geek had to be at least a little more willing to accept paranormal stuff than the average person, right? And maybe...maybe that willingness could grow into belief, with hard proof. And that belief could be all Ila needed to join the fight for Earth.

Dib's hair trembled with the excitement of it all. Maybe she was different from the others.

"Miss Bitters?" Zita called, raising her hand. The teacher glared at her.

"What?"

"Dib's staring at Ila again."

"Quit it!" Ila snapped, slamming down her magazine and glaring at him. "What's wrong with you, anyway?"

Dib was about to launch into a full-on "Zim's-an-alien-and-I-can't-believe-that-you-haven't-noticed" rant (which the class had managed to avoid for the past week and a half; he felt that it was about time for a refresher) but the laughter cut him off.

"Foolish Earth-beast!" Zim called from his seat. "Even your own people reject you. It's kind of sad, really..."

"Shut up, Zim!" Dib growled. Usually, it took a couple of insults to set him off, but today, he was more on edge than usual. He was about five minutes away from tackling Zim and initiating an epic battle for the planet (which, incidentally, the class had also avoided for the past week and a half. Dib's speeches and his epic battles for the planet tended to go hand in hand) when Miss Bitters took control of the situation.

"All of you!" she snarled. "Silence! SIIIIIILEEEENCE!"

The children finally settled down, and the teacher went on with her lesson. Ila settled back into her seat to read. Zim smiled at Dib again before sinking back into his half-conscious state of boredom.

"And so, the teenagers almost instantly realized the mistake of bringing nuts, salted or otherwise, out into the wilderness with them. No one is quite sure just what happened to them, but we can be assured—" Miss Bitters' lecture was cut short as the lunch bell rang. The majority of the class cheered as they began to flood out. Ila stuffed her magazine into her backpack, then slung the strap over her shoulder. Before she could leave the room, Dib leapt into her path. The new girl sighed deeply.

"Get out of my way," she said tersely.

"Listen, you have every right to be weirded out," Dib started. "But please, hear me out."

"Why should I listen to you?" the new girl complained. "You're crazy."

"No I'm not! Zim really is an alien. I can prove it. Just please, meet me after school..."

A knowing look flashed across Ila's face. "Oh, I get it. This is one of those "weird-kid-makes-stuff-up-to-get-attention" things, isn't it?"

"No!" Dib shook his head vehemently. "I've been inside his base. I've talked to his leaders. I've stopped his plans to take over the world about thirty times. Please, you gotta believe me! I saw you reading that magazine. You have to be at least _intereste_d in what I'm saying."

Ila looked taken aback for a moment, but she quickly regained her composure. "You really _are _crazy. Why would I go anywhere with _you?_"

"If I had just _one person_ to support me, I might be able to get rid of Zim once and for all!" Dib pleaded.

"Forget it." Ila pushed past him just as Miss Bitters noticed that two children remained in the otherwise-empty classroom. The teacher's admittedly hairy lip curled slightly, and Dib moved towards the door before she could expose the fangs that he was almost positive she had. He grabbed Ila's shoulder.

She spun around with furious hissing sound that reminded Dib eerily of a noise that Zim made every once in awhile. He barely even felt her foot meet his ribcage, but he definitely felt the wall that her kick sent him flying into. He slumped to the ground, dazedly reaching up to rub his head as plaster and sheet rock rained down around him.

"Stay away from me, freak!" Ila was gone before Dib could fight his way past his concussion and formulate one last, pleading response. It was pretty obvious that she wanted less than nothing to do with him.

_Well,_ Dib thought wearily as he struggled to his feet and mentally counted the minor fractures in his skeleton, _that could have gone a lot better._

He brushed chips of paint from his hair, then hurried out of the classroom, determined to catch up with Ila.

_But it could have gone a lot worse, too._


	3. Chapter 3

Zim's boots pounded against the hard-packed dirt of the playground, creating a staccato rhythm that could have been the underlying beat in a really lame rock 'n' roll song. His slender arms pumped up and down at his sides, and his teeth were bared in a grimace of exertion. He was actually running much faster than could have been expected from a child of his size and age, but none of the filthy human larvae on the playground seemed to notice this. They were too busy pointing and laughing, and yelling "Get him! Come on, Torque, you can go faster than that!"

"Aaaiii!" Zim shrieked as a huge hand swept downwards and grabbed his Pak. He tightened the ports in his back to prevent it from being removed, and so was lifted into the air. Screaming with rage and, it must be said, a certain amount of fear, the tiny alien instantly became the main source of amusement for everyone on the playground.

"Heh. Caught you, Zim." He stared down into the grinning face of one of his classmates, a hulking boy named Torque. The monstrous creature was bald except for the single tuft of brown hair falling into his face, and he was holding Zim in the air above his head.

_"You! Stupid, inferior human! Put Zim down! You shall be the first to die when the armada arrives!"_ Zim raged, futilely clawing at nothing.

Torque laughed. His hand was so big it enveloped the invader's Pak, making it impossible for him to extend his spider legs and escape. He didn't even want to _think_ about the human germs that must be even now gathering on the surface of one of the greatest pieces of Irken engineering ever to be created.

_"Put me down!"_

"But I haven't even started having fun yet," the Earth-monkey complained. "Don't you like fun, Zim?"

_"Put! Me! Down!"_ Zim shouted. _"I swear, I will annihilate you! I will rip apart your every cell! Your people will suffer greatly for this, Torque-monster!"_

"How come you never take your backpack off, Zim?"

The Irken responded only by hissing ferociously and writhing with every ounce of strength in his minuscule body. Several nearby humans laughed, their disgusting faces showing that they were highly entertained by his plight.

He was an Irken invader, a warrior of the highest class. He was an unstoppable death machine, fine-tuned with top-notch training, surgery, and technology. He was _Zim_, for Irk's sake! _Zim_! He shouldn't have to put up with this! He should have crushed the inhabitants of this _filthy_ planet long ago! The Tallest should be praising him right now for his superb victory!

And yet here he was, the finest specimen that his species had to offer, dangling helplessly in the air, being laughed at by members of a race that couldn't even begin to grasp what they were dealing with.

"Fools!" he yelled. "I am Zim!"

"Get that backpack off of him, Torque!" someone called.

Torque grinned. "Okay."

Zim screamed with the sheer effort of staying attached to his Pak as the human shook him up and down, harder and harder. The world blurred around him, and in the tiny part of his amazing brain that wasn't occupied with his current situation, he worried that his wig would fall off. But that concern quickly vanished.

His ports ached, and the muscles in his back trembled. He couldn't hold on much longer. Already, the plugs of his Pak were slipping. Zim prepared for imminent separation from the piece of machinery that kept him alive...

"Leave him alone!"

...and was utterly shocked when he suddenly came to a halt. Even though he was still hopelessly dizzy, he managed to look down at Torque, who was rubbing the side of his head with a confused look on his face. There was a large rock on the ground next to his foot.

Blinking, Zim put two and two together and realized that someone must have thrown the rock. To have landed in that position, it would have had to have hit the human's head in a specific spot. Having located that spot, he did the next set of calculations and realized that whoever threw it must have been standing in a certain area. He cast his lens-covered eyes to that area, and they widened in shock at what they saw.

The new girl. Pink-haired and with eyes of two different colors, she differed little from his other horrible classmates. Zim hadn't cared when she was introducing herself to the class, and he was tempted to not care now, except for the rock in her hand and her fierce expression.

"You heard me. Let him go."

Torque stopped rubbing his head and glared at her. "Why should I?"

The female said nothing, just raised an eyebrow and drew back her arm in preparation to hurl another rock. Torque gulped, opened his hand, and dropped Zim.

The impact knocked the air from his squeedlyspooch, preventing him from immediately leaping to his feet and clawing the human's face off for antagonizing _Zim._

The small Irken struggled to his feet as the crowd dispersed, annoyance sparking in him. Not only was the chance to take his revenge walking away, but he had been helped by a human.

Not that he was going to let her know that.

"Are you okay?" the female asked, walking over to him.

"I didn't need your help," Zim replied, straightening up and standing with as much pride as he could muster in the situation. His back protested the position, but he ignored the fire in his muscles. Screeching in pain could wait until he was safe within the confines of his base.

"Sure you didn't," she said, sarcasm evident in her voice. "I mean, it wasn't like he was about to rip that thing off of your back."

"Oh, please, it is simply a backpack. Nothing important. Yup, just a normal, human backpack."

The human smiled slightly. "Then take it off."

Zim stared at her for a few moments, at a loss for words. Then he said, "I don't have to listen to you."

"Your wig's crooked," she answered.

He reached up, discovered that, indeed, his hair was on the verge of falling off, and fixed it. "I knew that."

"Uh-huh."

"Why did you do that, anyway?" Zim asked her, changing the subject. "The other horrible little stink-monsters all delight in my pain and suffering. Why didn't you laugh?"

The female opened her mouth to reply, but a cry suddenly cut across the playground.

"Hey!"

Both human and Irken glanced in the direction that the voice had come from. Both of them squinted aggressively.

"Dib," they growled in unison.

Zim glanced at her in surprise. He knew that other humans found the Dib annoying, and took great pleasure in ostracizing him, but the emotion in this one's voice was very close to what Zim himself felt towards the awful Earth boy.

"So," he said. "Dib and his enormous head inspire murderous rage in you too, huh?"

She glanced at him and nodded.

Seconds later, Dib arrived and shoved Zim with a strength that surprised the tiny alien. He had assumed that every muscle in the filthy human's body was dedicated to holding his huge head upright.

"Get away from her, Zim!" Dib shouted. He then turned to the Earth female. "Are you okay, Ila?"

Ila. So that was her name. _It does,_ Zim thought to himself as he once again fought gravity to regain his upright position, _have a certain charm to it. Not the same as_ Zim, _of course, but still._

"Well, I was until you showed up," Ila answered, crossing her arms in front of her.

"That's great. Now, right here, I have photographic evidence of—" Dib had pulled several pieces of paper out of his pocket, but was prevented from showing them to Ila because Zim chose that moment to take his revenge upon humanity. With a mighty Irken war cry, he launched himself at the Dib and knocked him to the ground. The wrestling match that ensued drew the attention of pretty much everyone on the playground.

"Ow! Quit pulling my hair!"

"Stop biting me!"

"Let go of my foot!"

_"Give me that back!"_

Dib grinned and hurled Zim's boot as far away as he could manage with his thin arms. Placing his hands on his hips, the Earth boy crowed, "Well, Zim, looks like another victory for—"

His speech was cut short when Zim grabbed his hair, threw him to the ground, and held him down with the foot that still had a boot on it. With his teeth gritted in hate, the Irken extended one of the most effective weapons in his arsenal from his Pak. Normally, he wouldn't have even thought of destroying Dib in such a public place, with so many human eyes watching. But today, he felt that he had been pushed over the edge. Sure, his classmates tortured him on a regular basis.

But this time, for some reason, had really angered him. And the human whose face he was currently grinding into the dust was the perfect outlet for that anger.

Zim might have actually done what he intended to, if he hadn't wasted precious seconds by glancing over at Ila for some reason. She wasn't laughing, but she was smiling. Encouraged, he increased the pressure on Dib's head, eliciting several yelps of pain, and announced, "Idiotic Earth-thing! You should know by now that it does not pay to mess with _Zim_—"

His speech was cut short when he was yanked upwards for the second time that day. Dib was, as well; a playground monitor had noticed them fighting and pulled them apart.

"Alright, you two, break it up," the monitor said sternly, looking from one boy to the other. Zim narrowed his eyes, considering firing his weapon anyway. But what passed for his common sense had set in, and he retracted it instead.

"You okay, kid?" the monitor was now asking Dib, who was rubbing his head with a pained expression on his face.

"Yeah...I think so..." he muttered.

"Great. Now, let's see if you can play nice." He set the two down and very slowly let go of them. When they didn't immediately rush towards each other, he smiled. "There, see? That wasn't so hard, now w—"

"Aaaaaahhh!" Dib screamed as Zim collided with him again, and the monitor once more pried them off of each other. Zim clawed at the air, snarling death threats that weren't aimed at any particular person. His classmates watched with mild amusement. By now, they were pretty used to his psychotic fits of rage.

"Alright, that's it," the monitor growled. "I'm gonna let the principal sort this out."

Zim went unexpectedly limp, realizing that the situation was hopeless. Surprised, the monitor almost dropped him, but quickly readjusted his grip on the alien's collar. He glanced at the two children that he was carrying, and realization dawned on his face.

"Hey...you guys aren't Zim and Dib by any chance, are you?"

"Yes, I am Zim," Zim announced at the same time that Dib said, "How'd you guess?"

"Man, can't a single day pass without you kids trying to kill each other?!" the monitor complained. He started to go into a speech about how children just need to learn to accept one another, but Zim ignored him and glanced back at Ila. The female intrigued him, for some reason. She seemed much smarter than the other members of her species, and while he would have normally considered that a threat, she hated the Dib-monkey just as much as he did. Which could possibly make her useful.

As he watched, the girl with the spiky purple hair—Zita—walked up to her and glared in Zim and Dib's direction.

"Freaks," she muttered. Taking hold of Ila's arm, she began to lead her away. "Anyway, come on. There are some people that you need to meet."

As she walked off, Ila's blue-and-green eyes met Zim's purple ones.

He smiled, hoping that it looked less maniacal than it felt.


	4. Chapter 4

"So, what were you talking about with Zim?" Zita asked me as she all but dragged me across the playground. I didn't really want to go wherever she was taking me, but she didn't seem to care.

"Not much," I replied. "Dib showed up right after I started talking to him."

I had managed to learn that the green kid's name was Zim. Someone had yelled it out when the really tall boy in the jersey had been torturing him.

Zita rolled her eyes. "Ugh. Dib."

"Tell me about it."

"So, anyway, you might want to stay away from Zim."

"Why?" I asked, digging my heels into the dirt of the playground. The purple-haired girl just pulled harder. "He seems nice."

Zita stopped and looked at me like I had suddenly sprouted another head.

"What? He does. Well, maybe a little on the psychotic side, but better than Dib."

"After a week in our class, you'll change your mind," she said confidently, resuming her journey. "Oh, look! There's Sara and Jessica!"

She waved maniacally, and two girls over by the swings waved back. One was dark-haired, and the other was blond. The former looked relatively nice, and the latter had the expression of a queen bee who was just waiting for one of her underlings to serve her.

"Hi, girls," Zita said as we arrived. She finally let go of me, but I thought that it might be rude to bolt before I had been introduced. "This is Ila—um, what's your last name?"

"Ila's just fine," I told her.

"Right. Well, this is Sara, and this is Jessica." She pointed to the dark-haired girl first, then the blond. Sara smiled, and Jessica appraised me through narrow eyes.

"So, where did you move here from?" Sara asked.

"Another city," I replied. "Further north. We have moose there."

"Moose," Sara giggled. "Heh. Doesn't that remind you of that field trip, when we didn't go anywhere, and Dib—"

"Oh, man," Zita said. She started to laugh. "I had almost forgotten about that. They didn't let Zim go for whatever reason, and so Dib said that he had launched us all into space, and we were heading to—"

"A room with a moose!" Sara finished. Both of them cracked up.

Jessica rolled her eyes. "That was _so_ uncool."

"A room with a moose?" I asked, raising an eyebrow. That was pretty much the most random thing I had ever heard.

"A room with a moose," Zita confirmed.

"I don't get it."

"Neither do we!" Sara said. She and Zita started laughing again. I glanced at Jessica, who just tapped her foot impatiently. I wondered why she hung out with them.

Zita and Sara had finally regained their breath, but now they were engaging in a rapid-fire conversation that seemed to be mostly about bashing Dib. I would have joined in, except for the fact that they were mainly discussing events that I hadn't been here for.

Rapidly tiring of the girls who, for some reason, had taken it upon themselves to be my friends, I glanced around. There was a kid with bright orange hair and a sweatband playing tetherball with a tall boy, a turquoise-haired girl jumping rope while a girl with a ponytail watched, and another girl, sitting on a bench away from all of the others. Her hair was a shade of magenta that I had never seen on a human head before, and she was hunched over a hand-held game system of almost exactly the same color. Her clothes said "Goth," her position said "antisocial," and her expression said "don't mess with me unless you feel like getting your organs rearranged."

This girl, I might be able to relate to.

"Who's she?" I asked, pointing to her. Zita and Sara noticed me, then looked to see who I was indicating.

"Her?" Sara asked. "That's Gaz."

"Dib's sister," Zita added.

I squinted. "She looks nothing like him."

"Yeah, just one of the lesser mysteries surrounding her and her brother," Sara said, shrugging.

_Lesser?_ "What are the more prominent ones?"

"Who their mom was," Zita offered.

"Why they don't have birth certificates," Sara told me.

"Where they got their fashion sense," Jessica sneered.

I turned to Zita. "Who's their dad?"

"Professor Membrane."

"Seriously?!" I thought back to Dib's hair. Yeah, there was some definite resemblance. "I didn't know he had kids."

"Yeah...'kids'," Sara said. I was about to ask just what she meant by that, but suddenly, Zita said, "Uh-oh."

A kid was approaching the bench that Gaz was sitting on. He had sparse red hair, a blue shirt with a rainbow on it, and a vacantly happy expression. I vaguely remembered seeing him earlier, when I had introduced myself to the class.

"Keef," Sara explained. "He used to hang out with Zim. For, like, a day."

"He was never really the same after that..." Zita mused.

"Not like he was normal to begin with," Jessica scoffed. "Anyway, this ought to be good."

Keef had reached Gaz. He smiled brightly, and opened his mouth to say something. Before he could get a single word out, she folded up her game system, put it in her pocket, grabbed the front of his shirt, and threw him over the bench. It took her about five seconds to walk around to where Keef was dazedly getting up, grab him again, and throw him onto the other side of the bench. Gaz once again followed him, and this time, she picked him up, pummeled him in a swift, efficient manner, then drop-kicked him all the way to the basketball court. Satisfied that he had been properly dealt with, she pulled her game out of her pocket, sat back on the bench, and resumed playing.

"That," I declared, "was the most violent-slash-amazing thing I have ever seen."

"Consider it a lesson on why you don't bother Gaz," Zita told me.

"She's scary," Sara shuddered.

"Whatever," Jessica sighed, wandering off in search of people cool enough to be blessed with her company.

The bell suddenly rang. Zita grabbed my arm, and I tensed to leap back, wary of her repeating our earlier journey. But her grip wasn't that tight this time.

"You have to sit with us at lunch," she told me.

"Um...okay."

Satisfied that she had gotten her way, Zita let go of me and beckoned to Sara. The two of them scurried off, apparently content to let me find the way to the lunchroom on my own.

Not like it was that hard. All I had to do was follow the general flow of children. When I walked into the cafeteria, I automatically flinched and looked for the nearest trash can, just in case. The smell was actually that bad; I was surprised that my hair didn't catch on fire. What were they _serving?_

Despite my misgivings (the feelings were a little stronger than that, but I'm not going to go into it right now), I got a tray of turquoise-ish glop and a carton of milk.

I glanced around the lunchroom. I spotted Zita and Sara, sitting at a table with Jessica and a couple other kids from our class. Zita waved at me, then pointed to the empty seat next to her. I waved back and held up a finger in the universal "give me a minute" sign. She shrugged, as if saying, "Have it your way." Then she turned to Sara and rejoined whatever conversation they'd been having.

I carefully scrutinized each table. There were a few that were almost empty. One held Keef, a kid with a large head who struck me as sort of slow, and a violet-haired girl with braces. Gaz and Dib were seated at another, and I quickly turned away before Dib noticed me (he seemed to be absorbed in a conversation with his sister, so I was in luck). And Zim had claimed the last one as his undisputed territory, poking at his "food" with an absentminded mixture of disgust and curiosity. This was the table that I walked over to.

Zim looked up sharply as I sat down, seeming shocked that anyone would dare to approach his table. I looked him up and down, going for an in-depth observation this time. My view of him had been obstructed by another child's head in class. And I had barely had the opportunity to glance at him when we were out on the playground; he had been in motion most of the time.

Black hair, purple eyes, the green skin that set him apart from everyone else. He was wearing some sort of magenta shift that fell to a few inches above his knees. He also had on black gloves, boots, and leggings, and there was something on his back. It looked sort of like a backpack, but there were no straps. Was it attached to him somehow?

The entire ensemble reminded me of some sort of military uniform, designed for efficiency, conformity, and a certain degree of comfort, but that was ridiculous. Why would a kid our age be wearing a military uniform?

And why did he only have three fingers?

"Ila? What are you doing?" he asked me. Not threatening, just curious.

"Sitting," I replied.

"You can't sit here," Zim said.

"Last time I checked, it's a free country. Has something changed in the past few days? Did President Man issue a decree making himself king?"

He said nothing for a few moments, just stared at me. Finally, he spoke again.

"Why are you here?"

"I thought that you looked lonely," I told him, prodding the glop. Was it just my imagination, or did it move?

"Lonely?" He sounded like the word was foreign to him. "I don't get lonely. _Zim needs no one!"_

These last words were spoken at the top of his lungs, while standing on the bench next to the table. When everyone in the cafeteria shut up and turned to stare at him, Zim coughed slightly and sat back down. He kept his eyes on his tray until they started talking again, then his gaze flicked briefly to me.

"Seriously, why are you here?"

I kept poking the glop, watching it intensely. Yep, it moved.

"Ila?"

Was it alive?

"Answer me, Earth-child! Why are you here?!"

I looked up at him, and smiled serenely. That must have weirded Zim out, because he raised an eyebrow and leaned back a little bit.

"Isn't it obvious, Zim? To serve the Irken Empire."


	5. Chapter 5

As soon as I said it, I wondered where the words had come from. Irken Empire? I had never heard of it. But as this thought crossed my mind, it was accompanied by a barrage of information—the Irken Empire was a fierce warrior race, completely and utterly merciless when it came to taking over other worlds. They were ruled by monarchs called the Tallest; for some reason, these creatures believed that height was accompanied by intelligence and an ability to lead. Amazingly, they were usually right, with few exceptions. The Tallest almost always ruled in pairs—it was very rare for only one to head the Empire.

The ultimate goal of the Irken Empire was to rule the entire galaxy, and in order to accomplish this, they had a highly trained class of elite specialists, known as invaders. Invaders were created, augmented, and trained for the express purpose of landing on an alien planet, assessing its dominant species' weaknesses, and then conquering it with the help of Irken military.

The Empire was currently hard at work on what they called Operation Impending Doom Two, overseen by Tallest Red and Purple. It was their second attempt to conquer the universe; the first had failed miserably and nearly resulted in the destruction of Irk, the Mother World. The reason for this was sitting directly across from me, his eyes wide with shock.

"What?" Zim asked. I shook away the latest piece of information to pop into my head—an image of him standing before the Tallest, wrapped in chains and flanked by a soldier on either side—and focused.

"You heard me. I'm here to offer my services to the Irken Empire." The name was familiar to me now. My earlier confusion was nearly forgotten; it must have been a fluke. I knew too much about this for it to be new to me.

"How do you know about—" Zim stopped himself and continued in a calmer tone. "I mean, what are you talking about? I know nothing of this Irken Empire..."

I said nothing, just fixed him with a skeptical gaze.

He gazed back, evidently determined to outlast me. "I'm serious. Go away. Maybe Dib would be interested in...whatever it is."

"It's kind of sad for an Irken invader to sink so low as to deny knowledge of the Empire," I told him. "You know, occasionally, honor comes before the mission. What would the Tallest say?"

Zim gave me a questioning look, but I saw his fingers twitch slightly. I had struck a nerve.

"I have valuable information about this planet, skills that would be useful to both you and your kind, and I'm actually human, so I can go places and talk to people that you can't. I'm offering you my help, Zim. The chance of a lifetime. Are you really going to give it up just to keep from blowing your cover?"

He opened his mouth to say something, then apparently thought better of it and closed it. The alien looked down at his tray again, but he wasn't seeing it. He was thinking.

"You have until after school tomorrow," I told him, standing up. "That's a day and a half to think it over. But then I want an answer, Invader Zim."

Without looking back once, I headed over to Zita's table and sat next to her. I spent the rest of the lunch period talking to her and Sara about things that I couldn't care less about, and completely avoiding glancing at Zim. I knew that he was staring at me, though. That might be my superpower: the ability to tell when an alien is looking at me.

After lunch, we returned to class, and Miss Bitters picked right up where she had left off. I took the opportunity to read a magazine that I had picked up about a day ago; some buried impulse had driven me to spend some of my precious money on it at a newsstand. I was surprised at how interesting it was.

Dib was furiously writing something down, occasionally glancing over at Zim. Zim was tapping something out on the screen of an alien-looking piece of technology, and looking like he couldn't care less about Dib.

I finished my magazine half an hour before school was supposed to end. Looking over at Zita, I saw that she had a carefully interested expression pasted on her face. I had the sneaking suspicion that she was sleeping with her eyes open.

Sara was almost directly behind me, and I was saved from watching the hands of the clock tick slowly around when she leaned forward and tapped my shoulder. I was about to turn around and give her a quizzical glance, but a bubble of information floated out of the back of my mind: when one teenage girl taps another on the shoulder in the middle of class, she's mostly likely about to hand her a note. Instead of turning around, I simply offered my hand, and sure enough, Sara pressed a piece of paper into my palm.

I unfolded it on my desk, and frowned. It was a pretty detailed drawing of Zim being pummeled by the kid that had been trying to pull that thing off of his back at recess. Actually, Sara had quite a talent for art, but that was beside the point. I pulled out a pencil and wrote, _That's mean_, at the bottom, then passed it back to her. A couple of seconds later, she tossed it over my head so that it landed neatly in front of me.

_Ooo, you LIKE him, don't you?_ the note said. There was an angular smiley face after the words. I furiously scribbled, _No, I don't. Where'd you get that stupid idea? _underneath it and pressed it into her waiting hand. It wasn't thirty seconds before she tapped me again and I took the paper without turning around.

_Zim and Ila, sitting in a tree..._

I suppressed a deep sigh, not really in the mood for this right now. Nonetheless, I wrote back, and then tossed it over my shoulder.

_Right. That's totally mature._

I heard Sara giggle. A pencil scratched against paper, and then she flicked the folded note back. I frowned at what she had written.

_K-I-S-S-I-N-G..._

_Would you quit it? _I scribbled furiously, starting to get annoyed. This time, when I passed the note back to Sara, I didn't get an answer for about ten minutes. All I heard was quick, decisive strokes against paper. I was just starting to think that she'd given up or backed off or something when the note came soaring over my head again and bounced off of the knuckles of my right hand. I leaned down and picked it up, automatically baring my teeth when I unfolded it.

She had written_ First comes love, then comes marriage..._ right next to a detailed drawing of Zim and I at the altar, with him wearing a suit and me a wedding dress that I would never touch in real life. I mean, seriously, way too poofy. The sleeves alone...

But I shook that thought from my head and wrote down a reply that I didn't give too much thought, pressing harder with my pencil than I needed to.

_Shut up! Shut up! _I wrote next to a snarling, fanged face before whipping it back at Sara. Her only response was a smiley face, and I scowled at it, knowing that she had won.

_Yeah. See if I ever talk to you again, _I wrote, disgruntled, before passing it back with a little less passion. She returned it with nothing but another smiley face. I rolled my eyes.

After this last one, we had pretty much run out of room, so I crumpled up the paper and stuffed it in my desk. A couple minutes later, the bell rang.

As I headed out of the building, glad to be free of it even after only one day, something occurred to me and made me stop dead in my tracks.

I had nowhere to go.

I didn't really know anyone in this city, and I didn't have enough money to stay in a hotel. Not that any hotel would have given me a room without my parents to sign for it.

My parents...not for the first time, I wished that I knew where they were. Or at least who they were.

No, they didn't abandon me. At least, as far as I knew. And I didn't know much.

I headed into the city, making note of the trees that I saw. I was looking for one with sturdy, thick branches, and a lot of leaves.

My only substantial memories began about six months ago, when I woke up in a park in what I had assumed was my hometown. The strange, subconscious urges that had guided my life (and my journey here) since then didn't really count as memories.

I probably should have mentioned this before now, huh?


	6. Chapter 6

**So. Um...I am so sorry. It's been such a long time. I've been ****_so busy _****with other stuff...and it's only recently come to my attention that people actually ****_like _****this story. So, I'm uploading a sixth chapter.**

**If you're a fan of ****_The Perfect Student _****(currently, my only other story, a horrifically-gory MLP:FiM grimdark), then know that I'm updating this instead of that because this has, like, ten chapters already written and not uploaded. Sorry. I have other things I'm working on...sorry!**

* * *

Wednesday morning, Dib was in class bright and early, waiting for Ila. He had a slim notebook on his desk, packed with photographs and notes, all having to do with Zim. He was determined to win the new girl over; she was obviously a little more intelligent than the average, dumb-as-a-brick Skoolgoer, and she just _might _be interested in paranormal stuff, if that magazine she'd been reading yesterday was anything to go by. It gave him hope. If he could manage to get just one ally...

One by one, his classmates arrived. Zim was the last, as usual, sliding into his seat just as the bell rang. He and Dib exchanged their usual morning hate-filled glare, then both focused on other, more important things. For Zim, it was whatever alien device he was currently fiddling with; for Dib, it was his notebook.

He flipped through it, crestfallen, as he realized that Ila wasn't here today. He wouldn't have the chance to show her all of the brilliant evidence that he had gathered.

But, suddenly, Miss Bitters growled, and someone walked into the room. Dib perked up when he saw that it was the girl that he had been waiting for. Her clothing was a little rumpled, and there were twigs and leaves in her pink hair, like she had spent the night in a tree. But she was here, and that was all that mattered.

He smiled at her, brightly, an 'I'm not crazy! Let's be friends so we can team up and take down the evil alien in our midst together!' smile. Ila glared back.

"Ila, you're late," Miss Bitters said. "The cost is, of course, your immortal soul...care to defend yourself?"

Ila blinked, slowly, and glanced up at her. "...uh. I fell out of a tree."

The class laughed softly.

"And what were you doing in a tree?"

"With all due respect, ma'am...do you really want to know?"

Miss Bitters snarled slightly, then pointed to Ila's desk. "Go sit down."

"...what about my soul?"

"You can keep it. _For now."_

Looking a little intimidated, she obeyed the teacher's earlier command. Dib watched as she pulled a comb out of her backpack and started to remove the twigs from her hair, wincing when she hit snags and drawing sympathetic-but-confused looks from Zita and Sara.

He had tried to catch her as she left school yesterday, but he had lost sight of her in the crush of students. And since he didn't know where she lived, it was kind of impossible to go to her house and talk to her.

It almost killed him, but Dib managed to wait until recess to talk to her, guessing that Ms. Bitters was in a mood today and he'd do well not to incur her wrath. But before he could approach Ila, Zita and Sara hurried her out of the room. He sighed in frustration and ran after them.

"Dib!" someone yelled as soon as he was outside. Dib stopped, wondering if he should answer or just keep going. The thing was, he recognized the voice, and its owner would probably inflict great pain upon him if he ignored her.

_But,_ Dib told himself sternly as he raised his foot to take a step forward,_ the fate of the planet comes before my own well-being._

A flicker of sadness accompanied this thought. He had already given his innocence in defense of humanity, as well as a fair amount of blood, sweat and tears. Mostly blood. There was always a lot of that where his endeavors to save the Earth were concerned—especially if his sister was involved.

So what would he have to sacrifice next? His ability to love? His sanity? His _life?_

_"Dib!" _

Before he could run, Dib felt someone's fingers, stronger than those of a normal human from hours spent on various game consoles, dig into the back of his neck. She easily yanked him backwards, then let go so suddenly that he lost his balance. As he lay on the ground, dazed, he saw a dark figure lean over him and peered up at the three-and-a-half-foot-tall she-demon that plagued his everyday existence.

By some cruel twist of fate, she also happened to be his little sister.

"Hi, Gaz!" Dib said weakly, attempting to sound cheerful. Gaz, much like her fellow creatures of the night, could smell fear. "Is there something that I can do for you?"

"I was yelling at you," Gaz growled, folding her slender arms across her chest. "Couldn't you hear me?"

"No," Dib replied. "Sorry."

His sister bent over, causing her skull necklace to smack him in the face, and grabbed the front of his shirt. She hauled him to his feet, and he wondered how a girl who was half a head shorter than him could be so much stronger.

"I need you to help me with something," Gaz said as she started to drag her brother off. "There's this kid who needs to be taught a lesson."

"No, Gaz, I was about to talk to a girl—" Dib started to cry out, but then he realized what she had said. "Wait. Why do you need my help with _that?"_

Gaz ignored him and looked out over the playground. "Which girl?"

Dib pointed.

She raised an eyebrow. "Her? The one with the pink hair?"

"Yep," Dib said happily. "Now, if you would be so kind as to let me go-"

"She doesn't look so special."

"I think that she might be able to help me with the little alien problem that I seem to have," he explained, not deterred by Gaz's assessment of Ila.

"Why would she help _you?"_

"As soon as she sees these pictures that I have, she'll have to believe me."

"Uh-huh." Gaz resumed dragging her brother. He briefly thought about trying to fight his way to freedom, then decided that it wasn't worth the numerous broken bones that he would no doubt incur. Though he was pretty sure that he might have incurred just a couple when Gaz used him as a blunt instrument on the kid who "needed to be taught a lesson."

At lunch, Dib found that (much to his dismay) the girls of his class seemed to have caught on to the fact that he was stalking—er, _interested in_ Ila. They had surrounded her with in impenetrable perimeter of Amazonian strength, which seemed to be causing an expression of stunned bemusement on her face.

Or, well, that's what Dib would say when he wrote his autobiography. Because it sounded so much cooler than "they had surrounded her with a pack of giggling female idiots."

_I'll have to wait until after school,_ Dib thought grimly.

And wait he did.

The second that Ila left school, Dib was right behind her. She walked fast; he was surprised at how much ground she could cover with legs that were, if anything, even shorter than his.

He followed her through back allies, across several streets, down numerous sidewalks, and past a couple of cul-de-sacs, trying to work up the nerve to talk to her.

_Why is this so hard?_ Dib wondered. _I've been in hand-to-hand combat with Zim a million times, and yet I can't even talk to a girl? What's wrong with me?_

He hadn't had any problem talking to Tak. But, then again, she had seemed to actually like talking to him, unlike Ila...and, besides, Tak had turned out to be another genocidal alien. Not that surprising, really, when he thought about it. Living human girls always hated him, and he had a feeling that they always would...

Shaking himself out of his woeful thoughts, Dib started to wonder just where Ila was going. She had passed the area in which most of the kids from their school lived; it was almost like she was just walking around aimlessly. Or looking for something.

Or maybe she was trying to shake anybody following her.

Seized by a sudden bout of paranoia, Dib dove behind a row of trash cans. The move that he had hoped to execute with ninja-like stealth just resulted in most of the cans being knocked over. The sudden noise caused Ila to glance back suspiciously, but thankfully, Dib had managed to knock over one of them in such a way that the contents hid him from sight.

_I really need to practice my evasive maneuvers._

As soon as Ila had started walking again, Dib shook off the garbage and followed. He watched eagerly as she rounded a corner, then dashed after her...

...and got the shock of his young life.

She was talking to Zim! Zim, Dib's nemesis. Zim, the scourge of mankind. Zim, whom she should have been avoiding at all costs.

He was tempted to run right over and yank Ila away from him, but the rational part of his brain that wasn't ruled by teenage hormones (which was a pretty small part, but since he was Dib, it was larger than that of most boys) told him to find out what they were talking about. So the young paranormal investigator burrowed into the bushes and started listening.

"So," Ila was saying. "Time's up. What's your answer?"

"Well," Zim replied, scratching his head and looking at the ground. "I've given your request a lot of—"

"It was an offer, not a request."

_Offer?! _Dib thought incredulously. What _offer?! What could she possibly offer him?_

"Yeah, yeah, whatever." The small green alien waved his gloved hand impatiently. "Anyway, I've given your offer a lot of thought, and I've decided..."

Ila crossed her arms and waited. Zim took a deep breath. Dib tried to work out what was going on.

"No."

"No...what?"

"No, I don't want your help," Zim explained. Ila started to say something, but he cut her off. "And since you know so much about me and my race, I've decided to destroy you. So you can look forward to that over the next couple of days."

Seemingly unsure of what else to say, he fidgeted for a moment, then offered a rather lame, "See ya."

Ila watched him walk off, apparently frozen with shock.

"Wow!" Dib exclaimed, rapidly extricating himself from the bushes. "He wants to destroy you! You must have really done something to make him mad, because I had to chase him halfway across town with a pair of handcuffs before he really started wanting to destroy me, and, hey, what was that offer he was talking about, anyway?"

"What the-" Ila whirled around, fury igniting in her two-different-colored eyes when she saw him. "You little creep, were you _following_ me?"

"No, I just happened to be taking the same route as you," Dib explained in what he felt was a very good alibi, considering the situation. "Hey, listen, I can help protect you from Zim-"

"Get _out _of here, you _freak! _You're lucky I don't call the cops on you!"

"But-but you're in danger!" Dib exclaimed. "Zim's evil! I can help you, listen to me-"

"I don't _want_ your weirdo stalker help!" Ila stomped towards him, eyes narrowed, and he took a few involuntary steps back. "I can-I can take care of myself!" Was that his imagination, or was there a note of fear in her voice? "Just...leave me the heck alone, before I kick your giant head off your shoulders!"

Dib paused. "My head's not big."

Ila snarled, and drew her fist back into the perfect punching position.

Gaz didn't know where her brother was going, and she didn't care. But as soon as she caught up with him, she was going to punish him for dragging her halfway across the suburbs. They were supposed to walk home together; Dad's rules. They were supposed to meet each other after school.

But today, Dib had taken off on his own. And the only reason that Gaz was following him was to make sure that he didn't get hit by a car before she could make him pay.

The minuscule Goth rounded a corner, and a sound that she considered more enjoyable than any music reached her ears: her brother's screams of pain. Her eyes widened slightly at what she saw.

Dib was being pummeled-probably with intent to drive away-by none other than the girl who he had pointed out to Gaz on the playground earlier, the skinny one with pink hair. Her unremarkable face was twisted into a mask of hate, and she was attacking him with a fervor that Gaz could relate to. Up close, she could see that the girl had one blue eye and one green one, which was sort of interesting. But not that much.

Gaz stood there for a few moments and watched the stranger finish up pounding her brother into the sidewalk, before giving him a vicious kick in his ribs and snarling, "Stay...away...from me." Then she shrugged and started towards home.

It was kind of nice to have someone else discipline Dib for once.


	7. Chapter 7

The monkey growled faintly. Normally, it would have been a tiny sound, barely audible. But thanks to the fact that the volume on the television was turned up as high as it would go, children several blocks away clutched their bleeding ears and fell to the ground with shrieks of pain.

A small robot, cute in its simplicity, sat on the floor in front of the TV. Its round turquoise eyes were barely an inch away from the screen. Slowly, it processed the fact that the monkey had just made a funny sound, and giggled maniacally before falling silent.

GIR wasn't quite sure where Zim was. It was around the time when he usually came home, venting about whatever human annoyances had plagued him today. In some small part of his brain, the little robot might have been worrying; then again, he might not have. His train of thought lent a whole new meaning to the term "abstract process."

That morning, Zim might have told him that he was going to be late tonight for some reason. Or he might have told him about taquitos. GIR wasn't even sure if it had happened this morning, or tomorrow morning, or a morning that had only happened within the confines of his cylindrical head. And at the moment, he was too happy to care. His favorite show was on. Or, at least, he was pretty sure that it was his favorite show...

The doorbell suddenly rang. Somewhere, deep in GIR's subconscious, the sound registered. The little robot's eyes and other turquoise accents switched to red, and he nearly sighed with relief at the sudden sanity. Finally, freed from the fog that his less-than-regulation brain produced most of the time. Considering that his hard drive was little more than random junk, he was surprised that he had even these rare moments of focus.

_Switching to duty mode, _he thought happily.

GIR hurriedly turned off the TV and donned his dog-suit, then opened the door. A human female stood there, about the same age as the children that his master went to school with. One of her eyes was green and the other was blue. Her long hair was a bright shade of pink, and in the piece of his mind that was constantly frivolous, even when the rest of it was in duty mode, GIR decided that it was his new most favorite thing ever. He quickly crushed the silly thought and readied his weapons, although he didn't extend them yet. This female hadn't yet become a threat to the mission; he doubted that she would. He occasionally ordered pizza while in "casual" mode, but the human standing in front of him was younger than the usual delivery people.

"State your name and business, human," GIR stated in the deep voice that, along with the transition from turquoise to red, signified that he meant business.

"Oh. Uh...okay. I didn't expect that." She blinked down at him, a small green dog with black limbs, incredulously, before reluctantly saying, "I'm...well, I'm Ila." She attempted to peer into the depths of the base. "Um...is Zim home?"

To his horror, GIR felt the turquoise mist fast re-approaching, coming back to make him an idiot again. He struggled against it for a few moments, but it won, just as it always did. The world, outlined in razor-sharp red clarity, was once again obscured with a light blue haze.

"Nnnnnnnoooope," GIR piped in a much squeakier tone. "My master went out to go dancin' with the squirrels. He'll be home later."

He giggled slightly. "Squirrels!"

Ila raised an eyebrow. "Uh-_huh_."

In his mind's eye, she sprouted a pair of majestic butterfly wings. GIR frowned slightly, unsure where the image had come from. He didn't really care; he liked it. And he _especially _liked her hair.

"Well...can I come inside?" Ila asked, her wings trembling slightly, as if she were nervous. The sky behind her grew greenish, and cows began to drift through it. GIR smiled.

"Okey-dokey!" He stepped back, and the girl walked into the base, glancing around. The small robot closed the door, then squinted slightly. His guest now sported a set of antennae that weren't unlike those seen on Irken females. The ends were curled around backwards.

"Wow. There are actually a lot of hiding places in here," Ila mused. She walked over to the couch and peered behind it, and GIR sighed slightly as her wings and antennae dissolved. Reality was never as interesting as his head-world.

"Alright." The human took off her backpack and dug through it, obviously looking for something. After a few moments of searching, she drew out what looked like a squirt gun, filled with water.

GIR wondered if he should be alarmed, but was distracted by sudden thoughts of fried chicken.

"All right. Don't talk to me when Zim comes home, you hear?"

He smiled his affirmation, then wriggled out of his dog disguise. When Ila saw his true appearance, her eyes widened, and she crouched down, so they were on the same level. She studied him with a blank gaze, her blue eye moving _juuuust _a little faster than her blue one as she did so, her lips silently forming words.

_SIR. Standard Information Retrieval unit. Issued to almost all members of the Irken Invader class, to aid in hostile takeover of a planet...but this one...it's...different._

Shaking her head, hard, as if to dislodge whatever it was that was going on in there, Ila climbed up onto the back of the couch. From there, she clambered into the tangle of tubes and wires that formed the ceiling of Zim's base. Crouching among them so that she would be nearly invisible to someone who wasn't searching for her, she swept a suspicious gaze over the walls and floor.

"Isn't there, like, a security system or something in this place?"

"Well, yeah, sorta," the voice of the computer answered. "But the only human that I've been expressly told to keep out is Dib, and besides, Zim's not here, so..."

Ila tensed, and glanced around wildly when it spoke, looking for the source of the voice. Apparently figuring out what it was, she relaxed somewhat, and warily said, "...I see."

GIR gazed up at Ila for a while, and figured out that he liked all of her, but he liked her hair the most. He would have been content to stare at her until what passed for his brain shorted out, but when she glared at him, he hurried over to the couch.

Yawning, he stretched, then curled up in the corner of the couch. As his eyes drooped closed, the little robot thought that when he woke up, he just might paint the entire house the same color as Ila's hair.

Zim would be so _happy_...

* * *

When Zim finally arrived home, he was exhausted from arguing with the supermarket drone. She had refused to give him anything without compensation, even though he would one day be her supreme lord and master and it would be smart to get in his good graces now.

"Why did that fool-woman refuse to see sense?" he muttered, yanking off his wig as he stalked across the living room. The tiny alien was too tired to even glare at GIR, who was supposed to be guarding the house but had instead fallen asleep on the couch.

_At least I'm safe here, in my own base, _he thought wearily, reaching up to pull his lenses out of his eyes. _Here, _I _am the master. None dare to defy me..._

Which was why Zim was extremely surprised when someone dropped, shrieking, from the ceiling and onto his head.

"Aaaaagh!" he yelled, the impact knocking him to the floor. "Computer! GIR! Defend your master!"

GIR sat up on the couch, then leapt off of it and turned on the TV. He cheered as some sort of awful cartoon came on.

To its credit, the computer extended a few robotic arms from the ceiling, but then hesitated. It was unsure what to aim for; Zim and his attacker were almost literally bouncing off the walls, and they were pretty close together.

Zim screamed in pain as the human (at least, that's what the intruder felt like) grabbed one of his antennae and pulled hard. That was a very sensitive part of his body, and it was irritating when something even just touched it. Having it yanked nearly off of his head was utter agony.

_"Get off of me, Dib!" _the Irken yelled, staggering to his feet and then running backwards into a wall. He was rewarded with a grunt, but the Earth-boy held on.

He had come to the conclusion that it was Dib on his back. After all, who else could it be? Who would have the incentive or the knowledge to infiltrate his base?

Although...Zim had to admit that the war cry that Dib had uttered when he dropped was rather feminine. And that he felt decidedly lighter today.

"Dib?" the attacker wheezed as soon as some of their breath was returned to them. "I'm...hah...almost insulted...Zim."

He froze for an instant. The voice was unmistakably female, and eerily familiar.

"Ila?!" Zim cried with a mixture of shock, horror, and just a bit of grudging admiration.

"Bingo."

Taking advantage of his immobility, Ila braced her legs against the floor and managed to hurl him across the room. She looked a little surprised at how far he flew. Did this human not grasp the fact that Irken invaders were very light and compact?

Nevertheless, that didn't stop her from bolting over before he could struggle to his feet, planting a foot on his PAK to prevent him from getting up, and aiming some sort of weapon at his head.

Zim blinked, annoyed that he had been forced to fight with his contacts in. They got so awkward during combat; one of the many reasons that he preferred to battle Dib while not wearing his disguise. He would have taken the momentary lull in the fighting to remove them, but his arms were pinned underneath him.

The tiny alien froze slightly when Ila shifted her weapon slightly and he heard a faint sloshing sound.

"Is that...water?" he asked in a low voice.

"Yes, actually," she replied, sounding proud. "I did my homework."

Zim's eyes narrowed. "How do you know all of this, anyway?"

"Well. Uh." She sounded nervous for a second, before regaining her composure. "That's for me to know and you to maybe find out."

As an experiment, Zim tried rolling to one side to escape, but the girl just increased the pressure on his Pak. She had him exactly where she wanted, and there was no way that she was going to let him go.

"Alright, I give up," he admitted, resigned tone overexaggerated, after several minutes of pointless struggling. "What do you want?"

"For you to give me a chance," Ila said. "Just let me help you with one mission. Let me show you what I can do."

An idea popped into Zim's head, but before he could implement it, he felt the need to flaunt his superiority over the silly human girl.

"And what's to stop me from just agreeing and then ordering my security systems to seize you?" he asked slyly. Yes, he truly was a genius. The Tallest were wise indeed to place so much trust in him.

When Ila answered, he could hear the nervousness in her voice. "Don't-don't do that."

Zim surged upwards, regaining his footing and launching Ila skyward. She landed lightly on her feet, crouching like a cat, then stood and scuttled frantically backwards, looking scared and trying to hide it as she kept her weapon (which he could see now was just an ordinary squirt gun) aimed at him. Her fingers trembled on the trigger, but...she didn't shoot.

"Computer!" he yelled, then pointed to her. "Get her."

A robot arm descended from the ceiling with lightning speed, its huge metal pincers snapping closed around Ila with a resounding clang. Zim grinned viciously at her tiny grunt of pain; the pincers were tight, even around her slender body.

"Zim has won!" he declared, raising his fists over his head and shaking them in victory. Picking up his wig and putting it back on his head (even though she had seen his antennae, and appeared to know what he was, he still felt the need to be disguised in her presence), he waved one gloved hand at the claw. "Destroy her now. Feel free to cry, feeble human female. I know that your failure must be painful..."

The arm started to lift Ila into the air, but ground to a halt when she bucked violently in its grasp.

Zim's eyes narrowed as one of her sneakered feet, kicked up behind her, struck the first joint of the robotic arm with the sound of whining, protesting metal.

"Eh?" he demanded. "What're you doing?"

She didn't reply, but she did fall limp in the pincers' grasp, panting with exertion. Zim raised an eyebrow-or, at least, he raised the part of his face that an eyebrow would have been, if he'd had any hair.

"That's better. Now, on with destroying you—"

As soon as the computer complied and began to move the robot arm upwards, Ila started up again, kicking behind her and striking the joint of the arm on every try. It shuddered, and made a horrible, mechanical keening noise. The Irken clapped his hands over the places where his ears would be if he had them, closed his eyes, and gritted his teeth against the barrage of noise. When he managed to pry open one eye, he saw that the arm was drooping, the casing of the joint that Ila was kicking cracked open and spitting sparks.

"What have you done to my base?!" he yelled over the hissing of the sparks.

"The first joint-" _Slam! _"-is the weakest." When the arm shuddered, she froze mid-kick, then let her denim-clad legs dangle limply. She had the oddest expression on her face, and her bicolored eyes were fixed on something in the distance that Zim couldn't see. Her voice had an inflection he'd never heard before. "An unfortunate manufacturing error, which only gets worse with time as the joint is forced to bear the weight of the pincers. Most invaders who are given this version of the standard base kit are warned about it." She twisted a little in the pincers, wincing. "I...I think...I know the weak point of anything you could throw at me. I could take it apart." She smiled, and it was tired and a little scared, but it was still a smile. And it enraged Zim. "Good luck getting rid of me now."

Zim snarled, conveying a shocking amount of both rage and hate in that one tiny sound. Ila only looked a little intimidated.

"Alright, drop her," the invader told his computer. The pincers opened, and Ila dropped to the floor with a minuscule sigh of relief. GIR suddenly abandoned the TV. He ran over and hugged Ila's leg, smiling vacantly. She absentmindedly petted his head and looked pointedly at Zim.

"What?" he snapped.

"Well, what am I going to help you with?"

He thought about it. He had planned to capture the Dib again soon; she could help with that. Actually, a human aiding in the torture/experimentation upon/destruction of a member of her own species might be entertaining.

"Well, I was thinking about doing something to Dib soon," Zim said. "I could use your help with that, I guess."

Ila nodded, determined. All her cocky bravery was back. "I can do that."

"But then I get to destroy you, right?"

"Yeah, I guess..." Her face twisted a little, pink eyebrows coming together in an expression of mild concern. "If you want to."

"Deal."

They shook on it (Ila rolling her eyes when Zim wiped his gloved hand on his uniform immediately after), then Zim realized that everything he needed to implement his new Dib-plan was in his underground labs.

The Irken sighed, extremely reluctant about letting Ila into the lower levels of his base. But there was a lot she needed to know, if she was going to help him with this mission. And, besides. He could always teleport her intestines into her skull if she tried to tell anyone about it.

"Come on," he said, beckoning to her as he headed for the elevator. The human retrieved her squirt gun, then stood beside him on the panel that led to the shaft. GIR was still clinging to her leg.

Together, they descended into Zim's inner sanctum.


	8. Chapter 8

"You can take off your disguise, you know," I told Zim on the way down into his labs.

"Hmph," he growled. His arms were crossed, and he refused to look at me.

"...I'm sensing some resentment here."

"Hmph."

Since he obviously wasn't going to make conversation, I contented myself with looking out at the different levels of the base. Some of them looked pretty boring (like the room filled with boxes labeled in Irken), some looked kind of interesting (like the long hallway whose walls were covered with transparent, glowing tanks), and some were just plain incomprehensible (like the vast, cavernous space that housed a herd of moose).

GIR kept clinging to my leg the whole way down. He was strong for his size, and was starting to cut off the circulation. I didn't shake him off quite yet, though; I needed what little comfort his presence provided, after almost losing my life to Zim's machines.

You're probably wondering just how I knew exactly where to kick on the robotic arm to break it. Well, it was a lot like when the information about the Irken Empire came to me, right after telling Zim I wanted to serve it. All the flaws of a standard base that could be exploited popped into my head, and, once they were there, it felt like I'd always known about them. Always. I had no idea where I would have found out about it...and that bothered me. Just a little. But I had other things to focus on right now, thankfully.

You're also probably wondering why I agreed to let Zim destroy me after we finished whatever he had in store for Dib. I wasn't suicidal, if that's what you're thinking. I actually had a plan.

Okay, no, that's a total lie, I didn't have a plan at all. I was just...driven.

"Alright, well, this is the level where I keep most of my equipment," Zim announced as the elevator came to a stop. The doors slid open, and I peered out.

"This is a pretty tiny room for most of your equipment."

"Oh, you haven't seen the half of it yet, foolish human," he bragged, stepping out onto the purple floor. I followed, pausing only to pry off GIR, who separated from me pretty peacefully. "Don't touch anything unless I tell you to."

"Okay."

I watched him walk over to a machine with a hole lot of tubes running out of it. He picked them up, one at a time, and inspected the mouth of each tube. I noticed that he was messing with his wig quite a bit.

"Seriously, Zim...you can take off your disguise." I reached up and scratched at my own head, sympathetically, before even realizing I was doing it. "It can't be very comfortable."

"You think that I'm going to reveal myself in _your _presence?!" he cried, spinning around.

"Well...I've seen your antennae and I already know everything about what you are..." I replied. "So. Yes."

"Well, I'm not." Zim crossed his arms again and turned away from me. Glancing back over his shoulder, he added, "Besides, you first."

"I'm not wearing a disguise."

"But you have to be!" Again with the spinning. "You're Irken. How else would you know so much about me?"

I hesitated, before asking, "You've heard of that one secret paranormal society, right? The Swollen Eyeballs?"

He rubbed his chin, as if thinking. "You belong to them?"

"No. Of course not! Anyway, they really need to get a new password for their network. I've been spying on their conversations for the past six months." Don't ask me how I knew how to do this. I was driven by my subconscious...again. I'd gotten used to it since then, learned that following my instincts almost always led to something I needed. Or felt I needed. I didn't see much of a difference.

"Really?" The Irken looked surprised. And...maybe a little bit impressed?

"Yeah. They talk about you a lot. Especially that Agent Mothman...he reminds me of Dib, actually..."

"That's really how you learned all about this?" Zim still seemed skeptical.

"Well, most of it, anyway." A lie, but the real answer was probably too weird even for the creature in front of me.

"I see." Zim swept his lavender gaze up and down me, looking for something that I knew he wouldn't find. "Take off your backpack."

Shrugging, I tossed it into a corner. He strode up to me, spun me around (for some reason, his touch didn't repulse me like other people's seemed to), then started running his hands over the area between my shoulder blades. My eyes narrowed slightly.

"You have really bony fingers, you know that?"

"Silence!"

Finally, he stepped back with a sigh. "Well, you don't have ports. I...guess you're human."

I turned around, more than a little fed up with his suspicion. "Thank you _so _much for figuring that out."

"Well, yeah, I'm a genius, you know—" He was interrupted by the voice of the base's computer, which suddenly called out, "Intruder alert! Intruder alert!"

Zim glared at me, and suddenly extended four slender, metal, spider-like legs from his backpack. Using them to lift himself up in the air, he towered over me. He was at least eight feet off the floor.

"Wretched human!" he snarled. "I should have guessed! This was a trap, wasn't it? You led someone to my base!"

"I swear, I didn't!" I replied hotly, clenching my fists at my sides. I was afraid, but I was also determined to stand my ground. The last time I hadn't, metal pincers had started squishing my guts. "If I actually wanted to capture or expose you, you'd know. Trust me."

He held me with his gaze for a few moments longer, then seemed to calm down. The spider legs retracted, and he dropped back onto his feet. "Fine. I believe you. For now."

"Oh, wow, I'm so blessed."

"Yes, yes, but we can discuss that later."

Without further ado, Zim dashed into the elevator. The doors slid closed behind him. A couple seconds passed, then the doors opened again, he ran back out, grabbed me, and dragged me back into the elevator with him. I guess that he didn't like the idea of a human alone in his secret base.

"Do you still have that filthy gun of water with you?" he demanded as we went up. I checked my pocket.

"Yes."

"I will need you to use it."

"...for what?"

When the doors opened in Zim's above-ground house, I had my squirt gun out again and was pointing it at his head. He had a very furious expression on his face.

"It's okay, Dib, I got him," I called. "You can come out now."

"Stinking, lying human!" Zim ranted. "You come here and offer _help,_ then turn on me in my own home?! I will rend your flesh from your bones! You do not yet know the true meaning of pain!"

We held this position for a few moments longer, then I lowered the gun and he relaxed.

"Huh. Guess it wasn't him after all," I said, shrugging. The Irken scratched his head.

"But I could have _sworn..._oh, never mind. Maybe it was just a squirrel or something."

All I can say is this: Zim's good at improv. _Really _good. Even better than me...and I'm an amnesiac trying not to get pegged as one in a world hyperaware of people who are different.

"Well, the window _is _open," I pointed out. Zim growled slightly.

"GIR."

As he went over to close it, I glanced up at the ceiling. It looked normal enough. Except for...

Squinting, I tugged off one of my shoes and whipped it at the small blur I'd noticed.

It yelped, sounding very male, and dropped, landing right on top of me. We went down hard, and I shrieked in pain when one of its hands raked across my back as it either wrestled with me or tried to disentangle itself from me. The scars there weren't fully healed yet; they still hurt whenever something made violent contact with them. That was why I wore my backpack most of the time.

"Ila! What is this?!" Zim spun around, eyes widening when he saw me grappling on the floor with a vague blur. Ignoring the fire burning between my shoulder blades and the Irken staring at me, I twisted away from my opponent so that he was only grabbing onto my legs anymore, raised my squirt gun, and squeezed the trigger.

Dib yelped again as his cloaking device shorted out. Zim bolted over to me, grabbed the back of my neck and ripped me out of his grasp, and pointed an accusing finger at the intruder. He also dumped me unceremoniously on the floor and I landed on the wounded part of my back, but no one was really paying attention to me right now.

"Dib!" he yelled. "Get out of my house!"

"Wait. How did you get here so fast?" I asked, slowly getting up. I gingerly touched my back, then winced.

"Make me, Zim!" Dib replied vehemently, raising the camera in his hand like a weapon.

"I'm serious. I just beat you up an hour ago. How'd you make it home in time to change into that invisibility gear and get over here?" I persisted.

"Gnomes!" the invader beside me shouted, still ignoring me in the face of a greater threat.

Within seconds, four of the hideous lawn gnomes from outside were in the living room. They grabbed Dib and proceeded to drag him outside. It was slow going; he was kicking and screaming quite a bit.

"There's something that I'm not getting here," I said, tucking a strand of pink hair behind my ear. Dib had left his camera behind; I picked it up.

"Eh, it doesn't matter," Zim shrugged, turning back to the elevator as soon as Dib was outside. "Now, come on. There's a lot that I have to show you."

"But—unh." I started to follow him, then sucked in a deep breath. Dib must have scratched me harder than I'd originally thought; my scars were _really _hurting.

"What's wrong with you?" he asked, glancing at me. I shook my head and walked into the elevator.

"Nothing." I was no stranger to pain. Compared to what I had felt when I woke up six months ago, this was a mosquito bite. "Let's go."

On the way down, something occurred to me. I turned to Zim and said, "Why didn't you just capture Dib right now?"

He blinked, looking at a loss for words for a few seconds. Then he puffed out his chest and said, "You can't even begin to comprehend my mind, human. This is all part of my plan."

"Of course it is," I said dryly, watching the base whiz by.

As soon as we were back in the labs, I set my squirt gun down next to my backpack while Zim gave GIR a halfhearted lecture on not leaving the window open (I could tell that he had given it at least half a million times before). Then he walked over to a hovertable that was overflowing with all sorts of odd alien weaponry. Picking up something about the size and shape of a pistol, he announced, "This is a—"

"Sleep-E-tron 9000," I interrupted. He gave me a weird look.

"...yes. Anyway, to use it, you need to—"

"I bet that I can figure it out," I said, holding out my hand.

Zim laughed. "This is highly advanced Irken technology. The finest knockout ray that our engineers could come up with. And even if, by some miracle, you were able to find the blueprints for it, I've made some changes for the better. There's no way that a mere human child would be able to "figure it out," but here. It would amuse me to watch you try."

He handed the gun over. As my fingers closed around the grip, it was like something sparked deep within my mind.

_No, this isn't right. The cepton should be more towards the front, not sticking out the back like this. It's going to cause it to jam up. And the frewit switch is missing. Who's been messing with this thing?_

I frowned. The sudden flash of insight was making me feel...weird. Weirder than information just flooding into my mind, like it had before. And now I remembered—_Zim _had been messing with this thing. Why would I have suddenly forgotten that? It was almost like something else, deep inside of me, had woken up and found its way into my head.

Whatever it was, it was fading.

_Is the bottom of the grip gone? There's not enough finger grooves. One's missing..._

No, it was just that the Sleep-E-tron had been designed for a creature with a thumb and two fingers, and I had three.

I shook my head slightly, banishing the last of..._whatever _it was. Hopefully it didn't come back. The information-like I'd received while Zim was trying to kill me-was useful. This was just..._weird._

Zim was watching me, a smug look on his face. "Well?"

Without saying anything, I twisted the cepton to arm the sleep ray, then stuck a finger into the notch where the frewit switch would normally be. When my nail caught the edge of the mechanism inside, I pulled it backwards, charging the weapon. I spun around, raised the Sleep-E-tron, and squeezed the trigger. GIR toppled forward, snoring softly.

All of this happened within a matter of seconds, and I carried it out as if I had been training with the thing for years.

"Yes!" I raised both hands in the air, shocked and gratified that I'd been able to do it. "Uh. I mean..." I rested the gun on my shoulder and turned back to Zim, raising an eyebrow. "You were saying?"

He just stared at me. Finally, he shook his head and said, "That's impossible. There's no way you could have known how to do that..."

"Call it a lucky guess," I said, handing the Sleep-E-tron back to him. He placed it back on the table, then pointed to another section of the room.

"There's other stuff that you need to know how to use."

Several hours later, Zim was finally done teaching me. I yawned and resisted the urge to stretch, lest it irritate my back again.

"You have a couch up there, in your living room. Is it okay if I stay on it tonight?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah, whatever. I don't care." He was reattaching some hoses to a stasis tank and not paying attention to me. He still hadn't taken off his disguise, but he _was_ rapidly becoming used to my presence.

I went upstairs, tossing my backpack at the head of the couch. Kicking off my shoes, I curled up on the cushions and laid my head on the bag. A couple of minutes later, the elevator doors slid open, and GIR walked out. Evidently, the effects of the Sleep-E-tron had worn off.

He didn't say anything, just hopped onto the couch and snuggled into the inside of the C-shape that my torso was forming. I had the immediate urge to kick him off, but instead just petted him. I didn't mind that much; his metal body _did _radiate a level of heat that was actually quite pleasant, and I was cold.

I closed my eyes. The cushions beneath me were sort of lumpy (as if there was stuff stashed inside of them), the contents of my backpack weren't exactly soft, and there was an idiot robot slumbering next to me. And do I even have to mention the fact that I was in the house of an alien who had vowed to destroy me?

But it sure beat sleeping in a tree.


End file.
